What once ensured that I sat at a table next to the teacher is now posted, Monday through Friday.

I've contributed to perhaps the best humor compilation I've ever read. Available now on Amazon!

My second chapbook, "The Second Book of Pearl: The Cats" is now available as either a paper chapbook or as a downloadable item. See below for the Pay Pal link or click on its cover just to the right of the newest blog post to download to your Kindle, iPad, or Nook. Just $3.99 for inspired tales of gin, gambling addiction and inter-feline betrayal.

My first chapbook, I Was Raised to be A Lert is in its third printing and is available both via the PayPal link below and on smashwords! Order one? Download one? It's all for you, baby!

Thursday, October 2, 2014

She Works Hard for the Money; or So Far, Aging Has Been Lucrative

She is drunk. Not outrageously, and perfectly within reason, seeing as how we are standing outside a bar.

“We’ve just come out for a smoke,” Diana says. “You can join us if you want.”

And she does, because if there’s one thing Northeast Minneapolis is, it’s friendly. Inside the 1029, a boisterous gaggle of talented drunks are singing karaoke, one of whom who encourages the crowd, to its roaring approval, to “holla, mah ninjas”.

“My favorite part of Nordeast,” the new girl says, “is the age range in the bars. Twenty-one? Seventy? They’re sitting next to each other.” The streetlamps spill on to the sidewalk, pools of light at intermittent intervals that continue up the block and past two- and three-story houses.

Diana and I nod in agreement.

The girl ashes on the sidewalk. “I mean, us, we’re all the same age.”

I laugh. She is clearly younger than I am.

“What,” she says. “I’ll bet you money that we’re the same age. I’ll bet you $10.”

I smile at her. “I’m definitely older.”

“You want to bet? Within three years, okay? ”

Along with the admonition to sit up straight, suck in my gut, and straighten the house before company arrives, my parents also instilled a strict money-is-not-for-playing-with policy. I take a look in my wallet. I have two dollars.